Drop Dead Gorgeous

“Call Barnes. Now.”

“I am not waking up the sheriff because you lost your little girlfriend,” he says dismissively. “Hell, you should be thanking your lucky stars you ain’t dead yet from hanging out with that one.”

I loom over him, backing him into the wall again. “Call Barnes. Tell him Zoey is missing.”

An impossibly long ten minutes later, Sheriff Barnes comes stomping into the morgue. His hair is disheveled, his untucked shirt is buttoned crookedly, and his face is thunderous.

“What the hell is going on here?”

Alver tries to answer, “This asshole came in here threatening me, demanding—”

But Sheriff Barnes isn’t looking at Alver. He’s looking at me, so I speak right over Alver’s blustering explanation.

“Zoey’s missing. I’ve been trying to track her down since we talked. She’s not home, not at Holly’s, not at the funeral home, and not with Jacob. Her phone is here and the mop bucket is spilled in the refrigerator. I think there was a struggle.” I swallow thickly. “I think somebody took her, Sheriff.”

“Took her? Who?”

My mind’s been whirling on that for the whole ten minutes since Alver made that call, and I can only come up with one answer. “Yvette Horne.”

Alver snorts out derisively. “That pretty little thing? She wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

If only he knew what that ‘pretty little thing’ was capable of. I am, and so is Sheriff Barnes. Yvette Horne killed her husband and Zoey prevented her from getting the money she felt entitled to. “When Yvette left court today, she said, ‘This isn’t over.’ I thought it was an empty threat, but now . . .”

Barnes’s jaw clenches, his own keen mind processing through the information he’s been presented with. He steps around me to look in the refrigerator himself. I looked over every inch. There’s nothing else to find unless Zoey has magically appeared from an alternative universe since I last looked in there.

Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened, and Sheriff Barnes reaches for the radio at his shoulder.

“This is Sheriff Jeff Barnes. I need every officer in Williamson County to report for duty STAT. We have a missing person.” He pauses, the next words hard for him to say and harder for me to hear. “Zoey Walker is missing, foul play is suspected. I repeat, All Points Bulletin for Zoey Walker. We need to find her, boys. Someone took one of our own. Over.”

He releases the button, and there’s a moment of static before someone replies, “This is Smith. On it, Sheriff.”

Another voice says, “Parker here. We’ll find her, sir.”

He blinks, though I don’t think a man like him cries—at least not in the middle of an investigation—and pushes the button again, “Kenny?”

“Yes, Sheriff?”

“I need you to go by Yvette Horne’s house. She’s our number-one suspect and you’re closest. Be careful, son. Over.”

“Yes, sir.”

Silence descends for a moment as the chill of the room seeps into my bones. Zoey is really missing.

“Barnes?”

It’s only one word, but he hears everything I have tied up in it. . . my plea for help, my promise to do whatever it takes to get Zoey back, and most of all, my prayers that she is unharmed.

“I know, kid. Come upstairs and let me show you how a real investigation is done.”

Chapter 25

Zoey

A disgusting smell assails my nostrils, and that’s saying something because I have smelled some rank stuff before. Decomposition has its own aroma, unlike no other. Thankfully, what I smell now isn’t that, but rather . . . ammonia.

Stale and sharp . . . urine.

My nose crinkles, and I try breathing through my mouth instead, an old trick Grandpa taught me when I first started working by his side. My eyes flutter as I try to blink, but it’s just as dark as before when I manage to force them open. I’m lying down and can feel that I’m enclosed.

My first thought is that I’ve been buried alive, and I panic, my heart beating out of my chest as I thrash and flail, screaming in terror. My foot kicks something solid and metal, and I cry out, pulling my knee to my chest sharply.

“Ow!” It hurts like a bitch, tears instantly sprouting, but it does stop my panic attack enough that my surroundings start to take shape. Mostly, the hum of road noise comes to me.

I’m in . . . a trunk?

What happened?

I try to remember. There was court . . . and Holly’s . . . and the morgue. I was mopping. Is that why I’m wet?

Or is the urine my own?

No, not mine because now that I’m thinking about it, I could really pee, but this doesn’t seem to be the time nor place.

Think, Zoey. Mopping and then what? How did I go from the morgue to a trunk?

In a flash, I remember . . . something. A feeling of not being alone, yelling at Jacob.